Arab web users voiced their support for an Israeli soldier being attacked by a group of Palestinian women of the restraint he exhibited. Photo: YouTube/screenshot.

In a series of online responses to an al-Jazeera article about an incident that occurred in the West Bank town of Nabi Salah, the majority of Arab web users expressed support for the restraint exercised by an Israeli soldier who was beaten and bitten by Palestinians, the Hebrew PZM website reported on Monday.

The site’s visitors were commenting on a video showing an Israeli soldier from the Egoz special forces unit being attacked by a group of women and children. The soldier refrained from responding with force.

Support for his behavior during the incident came from the most unexpected of places: the site’s visitors from Arab countries, who praised his restraint, his lack of use of excessive force and his not resorting to using his weapon.

“An Arab soldier would have shot them all,” one user commented.

Another said, “If this had occurred in Egypt, they [soldiers] would have fired at the children without caring and would have been legally exonerated by the auspicious judiciary.”

Some of the comments expressed in Arabic in support of the soldier. Photo: Facebook.

Yet another commented, “Notice that, despite his having a weapon, and despite being a soldier of the Zionist Entity, he did not fire at their heads. Imagine the matter in Arab countries, how our own people would have behaved.”

People from Arab countries commented on the matter in other online forums and blogs, noting that Israeli soldiers were far more merciful towards Arabs than Arab soldiers. Some thought that this was because of the rulers of Arab countries. One said, “When I saw an Arab infant dying of hunger and another drowning in the ocean and being eaten by fish as he ran away from death to the countries of the West…I recalled that the most disgusting thing produced by Arab lands were its rulers.”

Others, however, took a more jaundiced view of the incident, saying that despite exhibiting more mercy than Arab soldiers, this Israeli was playing to the camera to uphold the image Israel presents of itself to the West, as a democracy that respects human rights. “The Israeli soldier has a thousand faces, a face for the camera and another face behind the camera,” responded one viewer of the video.